After three concerts at the festival it is possible to assess the achievement of the LA Philharmonic and their music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen. They are an orchestra for whom no score holds any terror, and who approach the whole repertoire with the same combination of technical confidence and massive sound. But there is something missing at the heart of their performances. Under Salonen, they shout but rarely sing.

They are most effective in a piece like Revueltas's Sensemaya, a violent five minutes of grinding dissonance and vivid orchestral colour, composed in 1938 near the end of the Mexican composer's short life. The work is based on a Cuban incantation for the killing of a snake, and the LA Phil's huge sound, with a vast arsenal of percussion, was enough to damage the eardrums of any passing vermin. But they played Stravinsky's Petrushka with the same interpretive approach, creating a wall of sound in the opening Shrovetide Fair, but never animating the drama of the story. This was a 2D, cartoonish Petrushka.

At least in Sibelius's Oceanides, Salonen was able to generate a large-scale musical shape. But the detail of the piece, the mysterious ebb and flow of Sibelius's elusive, fluid structure, escaped the players. Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe was more convincing: with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Salonen captured some of the luminous magic of this score. He has been in charge of the LA Phil for 13 years, and there is an obviously robust rapport between him and his players. But on the strength of this residency, they do not have a partnership that illuminates the depths of the repertoire.